RTA Bill 14 (2024) — Personal-Use Eviction Reform

Bill 14 amended the personal-use eviction regime effective July 18, 2024, raising the notice period from 2 months to 4 for everyone. It came back down in two steps. On August 21, 2024 a purchaser taking possession was cut to 3 months with a 21-day dispute window instead of 30, because the longer period was blocking first-time buyers who needed vacant possession. On June 18, 2025 the same was done for a landlord or close family member moving in, explicitly to align the two. Both are now 3 months with 21 days. Either way, the new occupant must live in the unit for at least 12 consecutive months, and failing to do so entitles the former tenant to 12 months' rent in compensation — on top of the one month's rent payable when the notice is served.

A tenant who wants to dispute one has 21 days from receiving it to apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch. Separately, and whether or not they dispute it, they are owed one month of rent as compensation, payable on or before the date the notice takes effect. In practice most tenants simply do not pay the final month, which the Act treats as the compensation having been paid.

If whoever moved in does not stay the full 12 months, the tenant is owed a further 12 months of rent on top of that first month, so the total exposure is thirteen months, not twelve. Three things about that penalty are worth knowing before anyone relies on it or fears it. It is not automatic: the former tenant has to apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch, and has two years from the end of the tenancy to do it. The burden of proof sits with the landlord, who has to show the unit was actually used for the stated purpose, rather than with the tenant. And the director can excuse the payment for extenuating circumstances, the standing example being a parent who was moving in and died before the year was out.

For a buyer this is the part that gets missed: where the notice was served because a purchaser asked for it, it is the PURCHASER who owes the 12 months of rent, not the seller. The sale has to be firm and the buyer has to ask for the notice in writing before the landlord can serve it, and from that point the liability travels with the buyer. Selling again or re-renting inside the 12 months is treated as evidence of bad faith.

The notice also has to be generated through the provincial web portal rather than filled in by hand, a measure aimed at the documented pattern of fraudulent personal-use evictions used to vacate units for above-cap rent resets. A notice that did not come through the portal is not valid.